The scene was quiet Tuesday morning as CP Rail re-started its work clearing brush and community gardens from the Arbutus Corridor.Bethany Lindsay
/ Vancouver Sun

The scene was quiet Tuesday morning as CP Rail re-started its work clearing brush and community gardens from the Arbutus Corridor.Bethany Lindsay
/ Vancouver Sun

The scene was quiet Tuesday morning as CP Rail re-started its work clearing brush and community gardens from the Arbutus Corridor.Bethany Lindsay
/ Vancouver Sun

CP Rail says it will take a couple of weeks to study the Supreme Court ruling before deciding when to restart the repair operations on the Arbutus corridor rail line, above.Jeff Lee
/ Vancouver Sun

The CP Rail line that runs along the Arbutus Corridor crosses through some of the most expensive neighbourhoods in Vancouver.Jeff Lee
/ Vancouver Sun

Workers destroy and remove community gardens from a stretch of abandoned CP Rail line in Vancouver earlier this month. The once-abandoned 11-kilometre-long Arbutus Corridor has been used by residents for many years as a greenway where community gardens were erected.DARRYL DYCK
/ THE CANADIAN PRESS

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VANCOUVER -- The Vancouver Park Board will be digging up and relocating trees along the Arbutus corridor.

The trees are endangered by the Canadian Pacific Railway's plan to reactivate its long-dormant rail line. Many are fruit trees planted in gardens that people have maintained alongside the rail line.

Wednesday morning, a park board crew will start removing the trees between 49th and 57th avenues in Kerrisdale.

Most of the bigger trees will be taken out by a machine called a tree-spader, and moved to McCleery Golf Course greenway. The smaller ones will be dug up by hand and given to a non-profit organization called TreeKeepers, which will find new homes for them.

"There's approximately six trees that need to be tree-spaded, and there's about a dozen that we're hand-digging and removing," said Howard Normann, the Park Board's Manager Urban Forestry & Specialty Parks.

"There were more, but a lot of the local gardeners and whatnot came in last weekend and took them out. If somebody originally planted them, they were more than welcome to come and take them to their own property."

Normann said it will probably take a couple of days to move the Kerrisdale trees, then the crew will move to Sixth Avenue between Burrard and Maple in Kitsilano.

"Down around Sixth Avenue it's a different story," he said. "We're probably going to have 20 to 30 trees that need the tree spade down at that end, plus at least another 20 to 30 to hand-dig."

Normann said the park board has until March 11 to move the trees. It got clearance to remove them from the CPR Tuesday.

The CPR owns 33 feet of land from the middle of the rail line, which means it has a 66-foot corridor. The city owns the land beside the corridor, so some of the gardens will remain.

"We own the sidewalk, what would be a typical sidewalk, a four foot boulevard and a sidewalk," said Normann.

"There is no sidewalk along Sixth Avenue, so the people that did the original gardens almost went right to the curb. I would say the majority of them are losing about half of their garden space. Maybe a bit more in some areas."

The cost of removing the trees will probably be about $150 to $200 for the trees removed by hand, and $300 and up for the trees that have to removed with a tree spade.

"We don't own a tree spade of that size, so we're going to bring in a contractor to work with our guys to remove those trees," said Normann.

The trees have to be moved because the CPR has said it will reopen the line, which hasn't been used in 14 years. The city won't let the CPR redevelop it for housing, and the city and the railway are at loggerheads over how much the line is worth (the city reportedly offered $20 million for the line, but the CPR wants $100 million).

Park Board chair John Coupar said moving the trees helps to make something positive out of Vancouver's fight with the CPR.

"It's one of the those things where it's a positive thing to do for the community," said Coupar.

"There's a lot of people that have a real affinity for those trees, they've cared for them for many years, and it just seems to shame (to lose them). We're always talking about building the urban canopy, that's part of the mandate of park board, and if we have the equipment and can help, I think it's a good thing to do."

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Vancouver Park Board to relocate trees from Arbutus Corridor

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